camping

Pluralcampings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Living for a short time in a tent or similar shelter, as a leisure or educational activity.

   Like turning the outdoors into a temporary home, then packing up and leaving no trace when you go.

   Camping by the lake gave the family a welcome break from city life.

   The scout troop uses camping to teach navigation and self-reliance.

   Note

   A mass noun for the pastime as a whole. It takes no plural and no article, so you say camping is fun, never a camping. It also works as a modifier before other nouns, as with the camping gear packed into a car in Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood (2023). The countable plural campings belongs instead to the act of pitching a camp.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The act of choosing a site and setting up a camp, including pitching tents and arranging gear.

   The camping went smoothly once they found level ground near the stream.

   Their camping at the summit was finished just before the storm rolled in.

   Similarsetup

   Note

   Each pitching of a camp counts as one occasion, so this sense, unlike the leisure activity, can be counted and made plural. The North British Review of 1848 uses it of troops bivouacking across a city, "these campings in the heart of a city." There the setting is military, not recreational: soldiers making camp, not a family on holiday.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of camp.

   The students are camping in the foothills as part of their field course.

   Volunteers were camping beside the trail while they repaired the bridge.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After a form of be it marks an action in progress (they are camping by the river). In noun positions it names the activity, where it shades into the outdoor pastime. It also carries the verb's less obvious uses, such as staying put somewhere for an advantage, or transitively staying beside something to gain one: camping a spot, not just camping at it.

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